


The Angel I Couldn't Kill

by antsu_in_my_pantsu



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21640453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antsu_in_my_pantsu/pseuds/antsu_in_my_pantsu
Summary: Mercutio’s reticence was an act of ferocity, not towards the world that killed him, but to Benvolio, the man who loved him.-In which Benvolio helplessly watches his beloved Mercutio die after his fight with Tybalt.
Relationships: Mercutio & Benvolio Montague, Mercutio & Tybalt, Mercutio/Benvolio Montague
Comments: 5
Kudos: 55





	The Angel I Couldn't Kill

**Author's Note:**

> THE ROMEO AND JULIET FANFIC AUTHOR NOBODY FUCKING WANTED OR ASKED FOR RETURNS AGAIN WITH ANOTHER FANFIC!! Not getting reads or kudos is my secret fetish.
> 
> I would like to preface this by saying that I fully believe in the homoeroticism of dying in your lover’s arms… like, ugh, the tenderness.  
> Additionally, I wrote the very beginning part (first page-ish), and then I watched “Romeo et Juliette” opera from 2010 and… wow. Holy shit. It’s amazing. I’ve been going absolutely crazy, literally bonkers over it! I just watch Les Rois de Monde or La Morte de Mercutio and I go FUCKING CRAZY BRO!!! Also, when Benvolio screams Mercutio’s name in La Morte de Mercutio, I lose it.  
> I might start a tradition where I say a song that reminds me of this fic. I am unsure, though.  
> Song of the day: Arms Tonite by Mother Mother  
> BTW - the italics are meant to be flashbacks!  
> The title is comprised of lyrics from Oh Ana by Mother Mother ♡  
> Please enjoy!

Blood so beautifully blended with the spirited grass, pouring through and consequently tainting the viridescent strands. A metallic scent, the gruesome bittersweetness of blood and rotting flesh, saturated the hazy midday air, thick. The fragrance, a pungent one, reeked of quietus.

Tree branches overhead trembled in the merciful breeze, scattered leaves or perhaps the occasional apple, and offered shade to the weary. The sun glowed in the sky, spreading balmy effervescence over Verona like a blanket as Mercutio lay dying.

He idly pulled strands of grass out of the earth and allowed them to scatter in the wind, absconded from his fingertips, as Benvolio attempted to swallow his own hysteria. He was tearing open his pockets, satchels like a madman before scourging Mercutio’s person, cursing as quietly as he could. 

_ He laughed, pranced through the streets as Tybalt’s choler festered. Even when he didn’t give his all, Mercutio held more skill than the other man could ever dream of. Tybalt looked pathetic, bested by a quipster. _

“Mercutio, have you not a flask?” Benvolio inquired, tentatively placing a hand on the other’s wound, thick blood dripping from his gorged stomach. 

He retorted, “Have  _ you _ not got one?”

“I don’t drink, so please bid me you have one yourself,” Benvolio repeated, stricken with panic. He had no time for his comrade’s impish wiles. 

Mercutio looked to the city, now distant from the edge of the orchard. “I ceased carrying one,”

Of course the one, single time when Benvolio asked Mercutio to do something, anything, he obeyed in a fashion that would ultimately be inconvenient. An appalling drunkard, Benvolio had called him. Now, he cursed god, for he had no means of cleaning Mercutio’s wounds. 

“You are such a fool,” He grumbled.

An eyebrow was raised. “You chastise me? I suppose, though, you’ve never been one to cry,”

“Quiet yourself. Say naught,” Benvolio’s words drifted off when Mercutio shifted to look at Benvolio, his face contorting into a grimace. “You are not dying, enow?”

He scrambled to unhook his cloak, pressed it to the grass with one knee, and tore off a lengthy strip. The thick material shredded unevenly. 

“Benvolio, Benvolio, that won’t be necessary. A grave man has no need for his wounds to be tended to,” Mercutio insisted, lightly pushing Benvolio’s doting hand away. 

He hissed as the other began to unbutton his shirt with a profoundly primal desperation, and in response, he refused to move his hand away from his wound. Blood, thick and hot, dribbled out, drenching his clothes. 

_ Mercutio blustered to Tybalt and vaunted to the crowd that had gathered, boasting that he defeated his opponent solely through ruses. Tybalt, exhausted, trembled with ire as kneeled on the ground. He had previously doddered, falling flat on his face like a dunce before dozens of people. Mercutio caused him to trip. _

__

“M-Mercutio, I beg you, let me… ” Benvolio pleaded, faltering when Mercutio shifted, and his innards emerged from under his torn flesh. Black, putrid bile mixed with the brilliant blood. The effluvium soused the air. 

The dying man moved his hand away from his side with diffidence, allowing Benvolio to remove his shirt. Mercutio flinched under the other’s warm hands, fear crawling under his skin in place of escaping blood. 

Benvolio twined the shred of cloth around the other man’s torso, struggling against his heaving chest and his own apprehension. It was a measure for a survival, but alas, a meagre one at best. 

In pregnant silence, they sat in the grass curling under their skin, the tree providing shade from the sweltering sun. Benvolio noted that his hands had become tainted with the blood of his friend, his palms sodden with cerise, as Mercutio respired raggedly, the breaths tearing through his lungs and throat with great difficulty.

It’s with great rarity the two are quiet together, and Benvolio decided he hates it. Mercutio’s vibrancy, once mistaken for coltishness, was now dearly missed, yearned for. His reticence was an act of ferocity, not towards the world that killed him, but to Benvolio, the man who loves him. 

_ Tybalt lunged forward when Mercuto expected him least, and his bubbly laughter clipped as he stumbled forward. His expression wrenched into one of agony, unnerving cognizance.  _

“I will kill the Capulet boy for this… what he did to you,” 

Mercutio looked acridly into the distance. Acrimony bloomed in the Montague’s chest cavity as he noted that the blood coating his palms moments ago had dried into a fine crust.

“So you admit it? That I am doomed?” Before Benvolio could object, Mercutio continued, “But. Please don’t speak of him. I don’t want to think of that wretch _. _ Only you,”

Mercutio said the words humorlessly, not looking at Benvolio, but through him. His eyes smoldered dully, a defeatist’s grasp for life, as the other’s own pricked tears. 

“I,” Benvolio began, voice fracturing, “don’t know what I will do without you. Since children, we - god, it’s been so longer - we have been together. I look back on my life - a short one, a good one - and I am unable to remember a time where you were not present. I do not believe I will be able to live without you…” 

He inhaled sharply and clapped a hand over his mouth as he let out a sob, shoulders juddering with violent mania.   
“Ben,” Mercutio grasped the other’s hand, “Worry not of how you will live. You have strength and wit and Romeo,” - he laughed dryly - “If anything, worry for me. I’ll be waiting for you for quite a while on the other side,” 

Benvolio clawed at the tears on his cheeks, indignance flushing through him as Mercutio’s words settled over him.

“It did not have to be this way. It did not have to be this way,” Benvolio protested, innane, “You are just - you - you are so  _ stupid _ ,”

Benvolio cringed at the words coming out of his mouth, chastising himself for berating his closest comrade at the hour of his death. Mercutio laughed briefly the words, bringing levity to the situation, before coughing up bright red blood. The red smattered over his body, the grass, and Benvolio. 

“Sorry cannot save my soul, yet. This -” he gestures to himself, to the man beside him - “was an inevitable tragedy. It was I who was bound to die, Ben. Continue on, but continue on without me,” Mercutio argued with a certain jaundice in his tone. 

_ Benvolio was the first one Mercutio turned to, staggering into his embrace, trembling in his arms. He dismissed Benvolio’s worries and continued to joke, yet the other man knew something was off in Mercutio’s tonality. Before he was ushered away from the square for the final time, Mercutio screeched to the people in a moment of sobriety, declaring a curse upon both families.  _

Something broke within Benvolio, for he began to weep impetuously, preemptively lamenting over his comrade’s death. He sits there, sobbing over Mercutio’s failing, shivering body in the middle of the day on the outskirts of the orchard. 

Deadpan, Mercutio broke the prolonged silence, “Ben, I’m cold.”

Benvolio was quick, yet ginger, to envelop Mercutio in his arms, pulling him into his lap. He propped the dying man up by the shoulders with one arm. Benvolio’s other hand intertwined with Mercutio’s, who leaned his head on Benvolio’s shoulder, the crook of his neck.

Warmth blossomed as Mercutio’s blood spreads over his torso, thoroughly seeping through the shred of cloth and the living man’s clothes. Mercutio grumbles something, sweet nothings, perhaps, but the words are slurred and incomprehensible, not unlike a drunkard’s.    
His eyes flitted, breath slowed. Benvolio squeezed his hand as if making a grab for his comrade’s life, grasping on to the remnants slipping through his fingers like granules of sand.

_ ‘A plague on both your families,’ he blazoned with fervor. ‘A plague on both your houses.’ _

After a few moments of stilled silence, Mercutio perked up in an queer moment of lucidity. With unnerving exuberance, gazed at Benvolio. He moved to straighten his body, yet blenched with pain and spat more blood, yet his eyes buzzed with energy. 

“Ben,” Mercutio airily said, pupils dilated, “I’m so sorry. For everything,”

Benvolio chuckled, shook his head, “There is no need for you to be.”

“I was not done. I… I am sorry for being loud and a drunkard and a wretch. You hath spent your life watching me, as though I were an infant, and yet I did refuse to change.”

“Mercutio-”

“However, Benvolio, I refuse to regret one thing. I am not not sorry for being your friend, your comrade,” He chuckled, pointed, “Can you not see? It’s you. It’s always been you,” 

_ Benvolio carried Mercutio through the streets, glaring at those who dare watch. He took Mercutio as far as he could manage, to the edge of the town, where the buildings faded into the vast expanse of apple trees, where they would play as children, a decade ago. _

The cryptic words hit Benvolio with like a blunt object. Mercutio’s unrelenting leer only further flustered the other man. 

“Mercutio, I - I don’t…” He stumbled over his words as the dying man brought Benvolio’s hand to his lips, weakly brushing his lips over the calloused knuckles. 

“Benvolio?” Mercutio’s eyes searched the other’s expression erratically, looking more panicked than when Tybalt struck him, just between the ribs. 

Benvolio gulped in air, trembling, “I love you,”

Mercutio smiled the faintest of smiles, soft yet content.  “As do I, Benvolio-” He whispers “-Am I yours?” 

With the softest of touches upon Mercutio’s cheek, as if scared he would crumble beneath his touch, Benvolio nods. Mercutio’s hand goes limp in the other's as they gazed at each other, transfixed on the details of each other's visage. Benvolio leans down, pressing his forehead to the dying man’s with the utmost care.

“I love you,” Mercutio avered faintly, his eyes fluttering closed. 

Benvolio’s tears ran down Mercutio’s pale face as he choked on his own tongue, knowing he himself was on the brink of plunging into hysteria.

In a fit of mania, or perhaps out of spite for god, Benvolio delivers a kiss to Mercutio’s lips, firm and fond and final. His mouth savors of blood, a flavor that lays leaden on Benvolio’s tongue. With a sharp inhale, Mercutio reciprocates, pressing his lips firmly to Benvolio’ in a final rupture of strength.

And then, just as quickly as Benvolio entered reverie, he was lacerated from its warm embrace. Mercutio went limp, and he was left kissing a corpse in the orchard outside of Verona.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly don’t like the way I wrote fanfiction, but I like the idea of it, so I'm posting it.  
> (I also don't have anything else and it's been two weeks).  
> Even though my Shakespeare fanfics are really unpopular, I enjoy writing them, so expect more of that soon. I am in the process of writing a lengthy BenCutio fanfiction, but I can only pray that I will finish it before I burn out and go back to DR or start writing for Haikyuu. 
> 
> List of references + allusions:  
> ✧ “Sorry cannot save my soul, yet” - deadass I was writing this while listening to “listen before I go” by Billie Eilish and the line “sorry can’t save me now” reminded me of Mercutio. Thus, I said, “fuck it” and put it in but more Shakespearean :’)  
> ✧ “Continue on, but continue on without me” - this is a direct line from La Mort de Mercutio, a song from the Romeo et Juliette musical (this is one of my favorite songs from retj eeeee)
> 
> WOW that was an insanely short list of references, holy shit. I normally have at least 10 biblical references and an obscure literature reference for good measure. Huh. 
> 
> I already said this, but I realllyyyy don’t like this fanfiction :// I hope I’ll like my next one more though :,)
> 
> My other social media:  
> Instagram - @wormweeb  
> Tumblr - @antsu-in-my-pantsu (shitposts), @wormweeb (fandom stuff)
> 
> ♡ Love you all! ♡ Kudos and comments are appreciated! ♡


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